Getting Some Play: A Steamy summer

Now that the supposed dog days of summer are upon us, the Steam Summer sale is in full force. If you’re uninitiated, here’s the deal – Valve’s awesome Steam service offers about 8 tons of awesome older games for dirt cheap prices, for PC (and often also) Mac titles. So, if you’ve missed the boat on anything from the last year or two, now is the time to scour the pages of the site.

When I say dirt cheap, I mean it – during one day sales, AAA games like Portal 2 and Metro 2033 have gone down to $5. Indie gems like SpaceChem and Dear Esther have gone down to $2.50.

Basically, these are the best deals you’ll have in gaming all year. The only catch, of course, is that if you nabbed all of the games when they came out, well, you’re not going to get much out of it. But unless you’re an obsessive day one buyer (or a game journalist, natch), chances are you’ll still want to take a peek.

Incoming!

XBLA’s Summer of Arcade promotion is in full force, with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD last week, and now Wreckateer is here for the Kinect, on July 25. The Angry Birds-ish physics based party game looks like a perfect summer distraction. On August 1, the promotion continues with Deadlight – a dark, evocative puzzle-platformer set in a post-apocalyptic world.

If you’re into fitness games (and I’ve played them all), the newest contender comes out tomorrow for the PS3 (Move) and 360 (Kinect) in the form of Adidas miCoach. The hook here (aside from the Adidas branding) is the ability to train with sports stars and unprecedented online connectivity/a huge fitness metagame.

On July 31, JRPG fans have Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance on the 3DS. It has a strange name (like almost anything Final Fantasy affiliated these days), but KH fans have kept the buzz alive for this one.

Fans of rhythm and platformers (and rhythm-based platformers) should get excited for Sound Shapes, Jonathan Mak’s (Everyday Shooter) newest creation, out on August 7 on the PS Vita.